Directors' Cup
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The NACDA Directors' Cup, known for sponsorship reasons as the NACDA Learfield Directors' Cup or simply as the Directors' Cup, is an
award An award, sometimes called a distinction, is something given to a recipient as a token of recognition of excellence in a certain field. When the token is a medal, ribbon or other item designed for wearing, it is known as a decoration. An awar ...
given annually by the
National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics The National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) is a professional organization for college and university athletic directors in the United States. NACDA boasts a membership of more than 6,100 individuals and more than 1,600 ins ...
to the colleges and universities in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
with the most success in collegiate athletics. Points for the NACDA Directors' Cup are based on order of finish in various championships sponsored by the
National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges ...
(NCAA) and the
National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) established in 1940, is a college athletics association for colleges and universities in North America. Most colleges and universities in the NAIA offer athletic scholarships to its st ...
(NAIA) or, in the case of Division I Football, media-based polls. A first-place finish in a sport earns 100 points, second place 90 points, third place 85 points, and lesser values for lower finishes. The award originated in 1993 and was presented to
NCAA Division I NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest level of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athletic ...
schools only. In 1995 it was extended to Division II,
Division III In sport, the Third Division, also called Division 3, Division Three, or Division III, is often the third-highest division of a league, and will often have promotion and relegation with divisions above and below. Association football *Belgian Thir ...
, and NAIA schools as well, then extended further to junior colleges in 2011 based on standings from the NATYCAA Cup. Each division receives its own award. The
University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC Sy ...
won the award in its inaugural year, but then Stanford University won the Division I award for 25 straight years until the streak was broken in 2020–21 by the
University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
. Texas repeated as champions in 2022. In Division II,
UC Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...
won six of the first eight awards, but its athletic program moved to Division I in 2003 and Grand Valley State has won 14 of the 17 awards since.
Williams College Williams College is a private liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a colonist from the Province of Massachusetts Bay who was kill ...
has had the most success in Division III, having won the award 22 of the 25 times it has been awarded for that division. The NAIA division was dominated by
Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located ...
of
British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...
in its early years, but in 2002, SFU transferred several of its sports programs to Canada's college athletics federation, then known as Canadian Interuniversity Sport and now as
U Sports U Sports (stylized as U SPORTS) is the national sport governing body of university sport in Canada, comprising the majority of degree-granting universities in the country. Its equivalent body for organized sports at colleges in Canada is the C ...
. SFU has since become a full member of NCAA Division II. From 2004–05 to 2011–12, Azusa Pacific University assumed the mantle at the NAIA level, winning eight consecutive championships before moving to NCAA Division II in the 2012–13 season.
Oklahoma City University Oklahoma City University (OCU) is a private university historically affiliated with the United Methodist Church and located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The university offers undergraduate bachelor's degrees, graduate master's degrees and docto ...
has been the most successful school since that year, with three Directors' Cups. For two year colleges,
Iowa Central Community College Iowa Central Community College is a public community college in Fort Dodge, Iowa, with satellite campuses in Webster City and Storm Lake. History The college was organized in 1966 on the foundation of three area junior colleges which had been ...
has been the most successful school, winning five of the 10 titles. The physical award is a
Waterford crystal Waterford Crystal is a manufacturer of lead glass or "crystal", especially in cut glass, named after the city of Waterford, Ireland. In January 2009, the main Waterford Crystal manufacturing base on the edge of Waterford was closed due to the ...
trophy. Prior to 2003, the sponsor of the NACDA Directors' Cup was retail merchandiser
Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...
, and the award was known as the Sears Cup. Beginning in the 2003–04 season, the sponsor was the
United States Sports Academy The United States Sports Academy is a private university focused on sports and located in Daphne, Alabama. It offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs as well as certificate programs. Founded in 1972, the academy has provided its ...
. In 2007–08,
Learfield Sports LEARFIELD, formerly Learfield IMG College, is a large collegiate sports marketing company, representing more than 200 of the nation's top collegiate properties including the NCAA and its 89 championships, NCAA Football, leading conferences, and ...
assumed the sponsorship of the Directors' Cup. Learfield Sports rebranded to Learfield IMG College in 2016 and to simply Learfield in 2021.


Scoring system

Se
chart
for further breakdown of scoring. * NCAA Division I: Counts top 19 sports at each school with the following breakdowns: ** Four of which must be baseball, men's basketball, women's basketball and women's volleyball ** The next highest 15 (max.) sports scored for each institution, regardless of gender, will be used in the standings ** For FBS Football: the top 25 teams are awarded points based on their final rank in the
Coaches Poll The Coaches Poll is a weekly ranking of the top 25 NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) college football, Division I college basketball, and Division I college baseball teams. The football version of the poll has been known officiall ...
. 26th place is considered a tie between every non-ranked bowl winner, and the next available rank is considered a tie between every non-ranked bowl loser. * NCAA Division II: Counts top 15 sports at each school with the following breakdowns: ** Four of which must be baseball, men's basketball, women's basketball and women's volleyball ** The next highest 11 (max.) sports scored for each institution, regardless of gender, will be used in the standings * NCAA Division III: Counts top 18 sports at each school with the following breakdowns: ** Four of which must be men's basketball, men's soccer, women's basketball and women's soccer ** The next highest 14 (max.) sports scored for each institution, regardless of gender, will be used in the standings * NAIA: Counts top 13 sports at each school with the following breakdowns: ** Four of which must be men's basketball, men's soccer, women's basketball and women's volleyball ** The next highest 9 (max.) sports scored for each institution, regardless of gender, will be used in the standings * Junior/Community Colleges: The highest scoring institution in the NATYCAA Cup standings among the NJCAA Scholarship, NJCAA Non-Scholarship, and State Associations divisions will be declared the Directors' Cup winner.


Past scoring system

From the creation of the award until the 2017–18 season the scoring was as follows: * NCAA Division I: Counted up to 20 total sports at each school, with a maximum of 10 sports counted for each gender * NCAA Division II: Counted up to 14 total sports at each school, with a maximum of 7 sports counted for each gender * NCAA Division III: Counted up to 18 total sports at each school, with a maximum of 9 sports counted for each gender * NAIA: Counted up to 12 total sports at each school, with a maximum of 6 sports counted for each gender * Junior/Community Colleges: Same as current


Criticism

The scoring structure has been criticized due to the number of sports counted per division. Although the number of sports counted in the scoring is based on the average number of sports sponsored by a team in that division, certain schools offer many more or many less sports than that. For example, Stanford's dominance at the Division I level is largely attributed to them sponsoring 36 sports teams, the most in Division I outside of the
Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight school ...
, which does not grant athletic scholarships. This gives Stanford many more opportunities to win titles than most other schools, especially considering that many of the sports Stanford sponsors are not played by very many other schools, all but guaranteeing a substantial number of points for the few schools that do. Other criticisms include the fact that four sports are required to be counted despite some schools not sponsoring those sports (for example while baseball must be used as one of the 19 sports counted for a Division I team, there are 51 Division I schools who do not sponsor baseball as of the 2022 NCAA baseball season; this gives those 51 schools an inherent disadvantage as they must count a sport for which they are guaranteed to receive zero points). Multiple suggestions have been made to change the scoring system. Some of the most popular of these include making each sport worth a proportional number of points to the number of schools that compete in it, to get rid of the limit on the number of sports counted then divide a school's total points by the number of sports it sponsors, and to count the median number of teams per division instead of the average (the median number of teams at a Division I school, for example, is 16; substantially lower than the 19 sports that are counted). However, none of these suggestions have ever been seriously considered by NACDA.


Past winners

* Results for years and schools shown in ''italics'' represent current standings and are not yet final. * These results are for the "final" standings, calculated after spring sports end.


NCAA Division I

Stanford and Florida have finished ranked within the top 10 every season. Stanford has never finished outside the top two.


NCAA Division II


NCAA Division III


NAIA


Two Year Colleges


See also

*
List of NCAA schools with the most NCAA Division I championships Listed below are the colleges or universities with the most NCAA Division I-sanctioned team championships, individual championships, and combined team and individual championships, as documented by information published on official NCAA websites. ...
* List of sport awards * Capital One Cup * NATYCAA Cup


References


External links

* {{official website, https://thedirectorscup.com/
Learfield IMG College Directors' Cup Current Standings

National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics

Learfield IMG College Directors' Cup Previous Scoring
College sports trophies and awards in the United States Awards established in 1993